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Breaking Away is a well written feel good/inspirational sports film that I found surprisingly entertaining and fun to watch. Usually inspirational sports flick don't do it for me, but Breaking Away is not quite the typical feel good flick. The well written screenplay that won an Academy Award in 1979 is what makes this film stand out from the masses of Radio's or Any Given Sunday's. It was also fun seeing very young Daniel Stern and Dennis Quaid. Anyway, Breaking Away is a fun cycling flick for the whole family.

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What makes this film work so well is how well defined and developed the characters are. Great casting, wonderful performances. Paul Dooley and Barbara Barrie steal every scene they are in. Sensitively directed and superbly written.

The Outsiders captured the angst of rebellious teenagers better. Rocky presented the underdog going on to glory better. Grease showed young, naive love better. In many ways this movie has been done better since 1979 but at the time it rightly deserved the Oscar for Best Screenplay.

It tells the tale of a group of teenage outsiders who sleep their way through summer, resisting finding jobs to support themselves -trying to establish their identity in a world hostile to the poorer, under-educated folk. It just so happens they find it, for one brief moment, in the sport of cycling.

I found the film Disney-esque with some mild profanity thrown in for good measure. Dennis Quaid is, like, 17 years old here and needs to get on a serious fast-food diet, dang he's ripped

Breaking Away (1979)

I loved this movie as a kid, but never saw it in its entirety until today. Even though it won an Academy Award for best screenplay in 1979, it's still not very well known today. I think it's a good "coming of age" movie and all of the characters are great except the main character, who really got on my nerves a lot of the time. It's great to see Dennis Quaid and Daniel Stern in one of their earliest roles also.

A harmless sport film with good performances. I feel it's age at times.

Ah, youth. I love this sweet movie. "Breaking Away" was an early wider-release indie movie in 1979. Won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Dennis Christopher's best performance; one of Dennis Quaid's early film roles; Daniel Stern's very first; knock-out performances by Barbara Barrie and the wonderful Paul Dooley. This movie is about a lot of things and relationships, but ostensibly this is an amateur bicycle race movie. It was very nice to see Cycling get some notice at the center of this movie, if not the heart, which is taken by the story and actors, actresses and crew.

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(****):

An intelligent, funny and exciting film. Well-written, acted and directed. A great film and one of the best films of the 1970s. A great film.

Breaking Away was the most unique sports movie I've seen since Space Jam, which was the most unique sports movie ever made. I never thought bicycle racing could be that fun to watch. The race at the end was very exciting and I surprised myself by how much I got into it. Dennis Quaid was awesome in this movie, and the main character was hilarious. The interactions between him and his father were classic. It was such a weird idea for a movie but it works almost to perfection, I'll never watch cycling the same...or at all.